The Last Supper by Tomas Gutierrez Alea - Movie Review Example

"His films always defined the limits of expression in revolutionary Cuba Schroeder, 12-22) 'The Last Supper' or 'La ltima cena' by Tomas GutierrezAlea, Cuba, 1976. (101 min) is based on an incident from 18th century Cuban history. The film concentrates on a pious slaveholder who decides to improve his soul and instruct his slaves in the glories of Christianity by inviting 12 of them to participate in a reenactment of the Last Supper. La ltima cena is also a slavery film set at the end of the eighteenth century. It is described as a satire about hypocrisy and a celebration of the Afro-Cuban legacy, " - - - undoubtedly the other masterpiece [along with Memorias del subdesarrollo] of Alea's."2 It is a subversive allegory of the religious hypocrisy of plantation owners especially with their ideas of abolitionism. The film deconstructs the image of the black man and the idea of the slave that is the added burden of his image (that Griffith actually justifies using Woodrow Wilson's writings in "A History of the American People". La ltima cena reveals the Calibn theme (the Hegelian master-slave ideology), colonizer and colonized binary, which is mainly influenced by the Cuban poet Roberto Fernndez Retamar's 1971 essay on Cuban revolutionary aesthetics, entitled 'Caliban'. Apart from that Caliban is an important symbol for postcolonial Cuba, since it gives a voice to the slave and allows an inversion of gaze where the "Other" finally speaks in his own language, desperately usurped by the master. Caliban was the name of the half-man half-fish in Shakespeare's "Tempest", a direct metaphor of the anthropological 'cannibals', that served as a landmark discourse for justifying the colonial rule which aimed at civilizing the savages, mainly the African Americans or the blacks. Thus the Calibn theme is of particular historical interest within the Latin America cinema of the seventies, where it was seen as symbolic of colonialism and enslavement.3 However, unlike 'The Seventh Seal', which looks Christian on the surface but is actually existential, 'The Last Supper' has an existential approach for grappling at Christian salvation through an anatomy of slavery. Thus, when an enlightened and pious aristocrat (a White) attempts to celebrate the Last Supper with his slaves, the hideous relationship between the class system and the religious establishment is made to question. The film explore and adopt an experimental approach to the problem of historical truth. Alea's black comedy, La ultima cena achieve an allegorical quality which becomes a distinctive trait of the entire movement: the ability to speak of subjects on more than one level at the same time, of the present while talking of the past, for example, or of politics while talking of religion. At the same time, the exploration of these themes quickly left the aesthetic of neorealism behind, as directors and cinematographers sought to create a visual style, which matched the legendary qualities of the subject matter. The Last Supper is a caustic, anti-religious social satire and role-playing gets drunkenly out of hand, the result is a slave rebellion -- and it is time for property ownership to reassert its place of precedence in the scheme of things. During Holy Week at the end of the eighteenth century, a count visits his Havana sugar mill on a day a slave has run away. The count tells his cruel overseer, Don Manuel, to pick 12 slaves who will be guests at the count's table. Don Manuel objects, but to no avail. The twelfth guest is the recaptured runaway. During the dinner, using religious analogies, the count lectures his guests on the perfect happiness possible in slavery. They in turn tell stories and make requests. He promises no work on Good Friday, but he leaves early that morning and Don Manuel rousts the slaves for a long day cutting cane. They rebel. Which side will the count take D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) has been defined as a domestic melodrama; a landmark epic that originally was originally called The Clansman.. What makes the film unique is the fact that The Birth Of A Nation was one of the few silent films which blatantly stood for the exploitation of the black male in order to reinforce the doctrine of white supremacy. It achieves this through the use of the much dreaded 'brute' figure - personified here by the renegade Gus, who not only betrays his former masters by joining the black revolt, but also commits the crime of loving one of the Cameron daughters, who ultimately immolates herself. The character and actions of Silas Lynch, the mulatto leader of his people illustrate this directorial motif of white supremacy. The sexual racism that these characters exemplify plays a crucial part in the film's thematic development; and it comes to a head in the film's last minute rescue finale which justifies the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, captioned by Griffith as 'the saviour of white civilisation'. The film was based on former North Carolina Baptist minister Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s anti-black, 1905 bigoted play, "The Clansman", the second volume in a trilogy called "The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan". Thus while Alea's film is reflexive, it is actually a counter-discourse to the hideous subject matter of Griffith's film. However, the impact of the film on the film history of America is paramount. Interestingly, judging from the post colonial perspective, we can say that the cinematographic skill in epitomizing slavery, a love scene between Reconstructionist Senator and his mulatto mistress, racial riots in major cities (Boston, Philadelphia, among others), become but necessary tools for showing discrimination and racial humiliation. It is important to point out that Griffith's film follows the traditional pattern of showing devoted black servility, or use the black man for comic relief. However, Griffith goes a step ahead to portray the image of blacks as villains. The film does not express the interests of the blacks in the way that the white stereotypes express the interests of the whites. The film shows the White male colonizers as violently partial to the black race with pseudo-scientific causes for their subjugation. The film, with its predominant love affair between the Northern and Southern characters explores the twin great American concerns of inter-racial sex and marriage, and the empowerment of blacks. Ironically, the film's major black roles in the film, including the Senator's mulatto mistress, the mulatto politician brought to power in the South, and faithful freed slaves, were stereotypically played and filled by white actors (in blackface), while the real blacks in the film only played in minor roles! Compared to the ironic implications of The Last Supper, Griffith's climax romanticizes the Ku Klux Klan with the suppression of the black threat to white society. Whereas the locale of Thea's film connotes a biblical illusion, Griffith's film focuses on a realistic plane of a Northern Stoneman family (of Washington D.C., with a country home in Pennsylvania) being led by an imposing parliamentary leader, the Hon. Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis). Ironically, the preface to the film says: "This is an historical presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction Period, and is not meant to reflect on any race or people of today". When following the South's defeat, Stoneman calls for his protg and aide Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), mulatto (half African-American) leader of the blacks. When greeting him, Stoneman orders: "Don't scrape to me. You are the equal of any man here". It becomes an ironical comment against the films orthodox portrayal of Ben's fear of black supremacy taking over the nation and he sees white youngsters donning white sheets and pretending to be ghosts to frighten a group of black children. This is an "inspiration" to him -- thus, the Klan is born. The KKK's main purpose is to frighten blacks and keep them in their place, to counteract "the Black Menace," and to restore order and "home rule" - thereby saving the South from powerlessness. The KKK's first visit is to terrorize a "negro disturber and barn burner." This stirs up "the new rebellion of the South.". Compared to the romantic death that Griffith gives to Flora who jumps off a cliff in order to avoid being raped and suffer dishonor, Thea's purpose in The Last Supper was ruled by his ideological pursuit of showing the brutal atrocities of an autocrat who has a whimsy of conducting a supper. His film tries to show the evils of an empire by means of an allegory. As a result, some of the scenes in the film may look to be poetic, if not a collage of diverse thought processes. Another niche the film attain lies in the symbolic connotations as propounded by imagery of the Ku Klux Klan's final triumph and the manner in which the Klan members supervise the elections with guns drawn. The use of static shots portrays the demonic forces of war - throngs of suffering people and piles of dead corpses. However, a sense of surrealism is attained in the scene where the film transforms into a scene of angelic people seen in flowing robes. Griffith's film though repulsive, naive, biased, simplistic, historically inaccurate, and astonishing in its view of history and racist glorification of the KKK remains a tremendously significant and powerful work of art (and example of movie propaganda), with extraordinary effects and brilliantly-filmed sequences. In many ways it pre-empts how art can become propaganda oriented. In this way, it can be said to inspire the working consciousness of men like Bertolt Brecht. In contrast, Gutirrez Alea's film deconstructs the role of propaganda in media and allows the audience to identify with three key moments of cultural revolution as it evokes the assault on the slaves mounted by the white groups evokes necessity for change and liberation. The greatness of Birth of a Nation lies in the fact that it was the pioneering trope of introducing the paradigm of story telling in western cinema. Apart from the descriptive narrative, the film also uses the concept of parallel action (in a chase sequence) and exploits the cinematic potentials of close-ups and fades. Other unique devices used in the film were the iris shot (whereby the film is vignetted at the corners). It was also one of the first of the 'big' pictures which was complete with glorious panoramic shots such as colossal paintings and wonderfully staged battle scenes, all of which are balanced by scenes of the stark plantation life and a wisp of romance. It deals with the theme of the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction in the south from the western discourse of self-empathy and self-pity: a film which critics call as a "defense of their Aryan Birthright". In contrast, Tomas Gutierrez Alea's movie deals with the paradigm of the oriental 'other'. Under the garb of a Christian allegory, the film explores the psyche that pre-empts the concept of colonisation and racial superiority. The film is a brilliantly exposition of a sarcastic tour de force that blends the blasphemous ironies of Christianity, racism, exploitation with an ominous undercurrent of imminent political reckoning. In its appropriation of language and images, especially the part where the Last Supper takes place, the film becomes a parallel Discourse of a marginalized society. It voices the ironies of a civilization that has become a wasteland of modern existence. If Birth Of A Nation is a story of a race's survival, The Last Supper is a poem about the latent friction arising out of dominance and resistance, and a pretty dark poem at that. Read More